Welcome to Dialogues of Discernment
Almost every morning, I hold a written dialogue between me and myself. Or more precisely, I hold a dialogue between my everyday mind, and the quiet, {Wise Voice} in me (and in us all) which has the answers to all my questions.
I’ve come to attribute this {Wise Voice} to what I call my {Soul Self}. We all have one. It works alongside our Human Self’s {Everyday Mind} and it’s role is to guide us, orientate us and keep us on our mission in life. We can tap into the wisdom of the {Soul Self}, by getting quiet, and asking it questions.
I started dialoguing like this in my hand-written diary, for comfort and self-therapy, in about 2008. In 2018, with some 150 completed notebooks starting to take over the house, I moved from handwritten diaries to writing online here. I denote the inner {Wise Voice} by bold type, and my own {Everyday Mind} is expressed in normal type.
The inner {Wise Voice} of my {Soul Self} generally speaks to me in the plural (‘we’) – I don’t know why this is the case. Anyway, the pluralising does seem to help me differentiate that voice and my everyday mind. I used to wonder if the voice, especially when it was particularly strong, was me channelling some off-consciousness intelligence; nowadays I am comfortable that I am simply accessing the deep intelligence we all naturally have when our emotional system is calm, our brainwaves are in the alpha / theta state and we simply create the time and space to ask our wiser selves what we really know. Maybe I could also describe it as conversing with my ‘higher self’, or what Caroline Myss calls, the ‘voice of my soul’.
Each Dialogue finishes with a message – a one line piece of wisdom, borne out of the day’s conversation, for me to take through the day for guidance and practice. Sometimes I’ll write a key word or acronym of the message in biro on my wrist to keep me present to the learning across the day. These messages, usually in the form of ‘I am…’ statements, go on afterwards to form the heading to each Dialogue.
It’s fair to say, after many years of this practice of therapeutic self-journalling, these gentle, affirming messages have profoundly informed and changed the way I think and live my life. It’s like having a daily CBT / DBT session with myself most compassionate inner self, and the messages work like a balm to override my default thinking. It’s like daily pulses of attention training. I’m very lucky.
My Dialogues tend to move through themes, or projects, lasting several months each. Sometimes, a book becomes an accompaniment to the project, and part of my morning dialoguing process involves stopping to read a chapter – which invariably informs the dialogue of the day.
Here are the starting points to all the Dialogues of Discernment projects that so far exist online:
The first one here is very much about physical and mental health: The MEDS project.
Next, I asked myself what brings about the Peak experiences of life. This project launched me into an unexpected and nurturing journey with the Taoist key work, The Tao Te Ching, upon which my therapeutic journaling enquiries became pivotal. The Peak Project:
After the Peak Project I decided I needed to spend less time on these Dialogues of Discernment which were anyway for my eyes only, and repurpose my time and my writing impulses to my professional blog, where I could write about conflict resolution, and be more useful with my writing. But within a few days, the urge to write here became too strong, and I heard, ‘Sometimes we need to talk to you in private.’ And so, I returned here for consolation and guidance. BUT, several weeks in, I heard, ‘Pivot! It’s ‘Pivot’ not ‘Private’.’ And the Private dialogues summarily became the Pivot project.
In this project, I sought to find the Autistic Zen Zone which would best give rest and nourishment to my beautiful Aspie brain. This led me to studying Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind by Shunryū Suzuki (1970) as a thread through this project. What a good basis that went on to become, when our days of busy whirlwind productivity came to a grinding halt as the coronavirus pandemic changed life for everyone across the globe. After Zen Mind Beginners Mind, I followed the HeartMath Institute’s free course on heart-based living – another beautiful resource to help handle the stormy waves of lockdown.
Welcome to the Pivot Project (aka Private):
As the Covid-19 pandemic gathered pace, the Pivot project segued into the Presence Project, which centred around studying and practising the extraordinary book by Michael Brown, The Presence Project:
Pivot 143 / Presence 1: I am embarking on the Presence project (#TEWTAP for entering PMA)
The Presence Project drew to a close as 2020 ended, and The Create Project began as 2021 opened. It’s intention: to explore the creative faculties, to follow creative impulses, to shift to a lifestyle of create>consume:
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You might be interested in having a go at doing your own Dialogues of Discernment or therapeutic journaling, so here are some thoughts on getting going:
http://dialoguesofdiscernment.com/how-to-1-how-to-do-a-dialogue-of-discernment
With much love,
from both of me to both of you,
Mrs Dialogue xx
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